About me

I am an evolutionary biologist captivated by understanding how symbioses are established, maintained, and evolve over time. I use a combination of computational approaches and wet-lab experiments to study fungal symbioses with plants, other fungi, insects, bacteria, and humans.

I am currently a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley in the labs of Drs.John Taylorand Rachel Brem. My work is focused on understanding population structure and infection biology of Coccidioides. Also known as Valley Fever, infections from this human fungal pathogen are on the rise in the South Western United States, including California.

I received my PhD in Genetics & Genomics at Duke University co-advised by Drs.Rytas Vilgalysand Jennifer Wernegreen using plant-associated bacteria and fungi as a model to study evolution of symbioses. This work identified aspects of microbial interactions that lead to long term inter-kingdom symbioses and the repercussions for microbial genome evolution. The research was primarily focused on elucidating interaction mechanisms between bacterial endosymbionts (pictured below) and their host fungi via whole genome sequencing and comparative genomics.

Transmission electron micrograph of bacteria living inside of fungal cells

During my PhD research, I was also investigating how plant associated fungi interact with free-living soil bacteria known as ‘mycorrhizal helpers’ (pictured below) to facilitate bacterial-fungal-plant symbioses.

Fungi & bacteria growing together in lab

To better understand these symbioses and others I use computational biology, microfluidics, microscopy, and systematics to integrate and interpret a combination of genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic, and volatomic data.

Making time lapse videos of bacterial fungal interactions with custom designed microfluidic devices